Poppin' to Copenhagen

I've just got back from Copenhagen. We managed to get tickets from Boras, changing at Alvesta, for roughly £20 so it was really cheap to hop over to Denmark for a few days. We got to our hostel called Copenhagen Downtown pretty smoothly, and it was surprisingly nice. After settling in we went for a drink in the bar downstairs and it was refreshingly cheap too. Anything would seem cheap after spending any time out eating and drinking in Sweden. We realised pretty quickly that our hostel was bang in the centre of all the night life and all the major sites. 


On a walk around town we passed one of the major canals; there were huge piles of some foul smelling pond weed from the bottom of the canal. Presumably the river bed had been raked clean a few days before or something. Although the smell of these piles of pond weed smelt disgusting in the baking heat I found them really interesting. I think the photos of them will be useful for a future project; they looked like piles of felted fabric. 


We did a lot of shopping on our trip. The vintage stores are all in one area, which was conveniently on the doorstep of our hostel. Plus there are lots of home stores that are really interesting because they are full of neat little kitchen utensils and very modern and chic pared down pieces of furniture.


We were lucky enough to go to see the Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition on our second day there at the National Gallery of Denmark. I was a wonderful exhibition full of really famous prints. In the evening we chanced upon a cheap and cheerful bar called 'Floss' near our hostel. It was really busy and full of a real mix of people; lots of young and trendy types and then also a few old men. Whether or not this is still illegal there everyone was smoking and it was impossible to get out of there not stinking. 


On our third and final morning waking up in Denmark we went to the Design Museum. There was a fantastic exhibition of Danish design through the decades and also some interesting exhibits on pioneering new ideas and inventions. There was a large section dedicated to 'Unidrain' which is a long thin drain which is becoming more and more popular in modern buildings as it eliminates a plughole in favour of a long thin stainless steel strip. There was also an area on medical design and the numerous prototypes that go into a finished product. For example, there were 19 commodes (portable toilets) designed before it was sold to seven UK hospitals from Denmark over a period of 4 months.